Hello all. I have a 20 gallon tank with 2 large plants and a moss ball. As old posts said I went through many bad batches of guppies (all died) from petsmart. Eventually I got a pregnant one (she died too) who had about 7-10 fry. ALL of those fry have made it and have grown to be beautiful guppies. Since then I have had a few small births and my number is around 14 or so adult guppies. A few weeks ago I lost 3 females back to back and I think my water quality got away from me while I was out of town for two weeks. Changed the filter system and all is well. Sadly, as well as my guppies have done they havent produced any fry in a long time. Other than the one spell of poor water quality due to my pump dying nothing in the aquarium has changed. I have read where some suggest a cooler temperature to encourage breeding, and my temp was pushing 80, so I dropped it down to about 72. Other than that I have found no suggestions for what could be stopping my guppies from breeding. Two of my females are HUGE and look like they could pop at any moment but they have looked like that for weeks. I know guppies eat their young but I have always had some survive and I have more cover now then I ever have. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Something is preventing Guppy breeding...
- Thread starter Dunedain05
- Start date
Your water quality swung on ya. Lots of info up there to suggest it. I would test with API liquid test kit after you level things out with water changes and such. I developed a live plant rule for my freshwaters, because even two or three plants can make a HUGE difference on cleaning up a dirty tank (or keeping a tank clean in general).
I've actually found the opposite to be true. I'm not getting much activity in any of the guppy tanks lately. Only thing I can attribute it to is the higher temps. Many of the members in our aquarium society have voiced the same.
Replaced the pump and filter. The pump was crapping out while I was gone and it was flowing at nothing more than a trickle so nothing was really getting filtered. Water clarity is back to normal.
Im confused by your response. Are you saying your lack of activity is due to the high temps and are suggesting lower temps? I couldn't tell if you were responding to me or the reply to my post.
I keep my guppy tank at 76-78, which is room temp. for me. I will turn the heater on when it starts to get cold outside. I just had a guppy that was holding fry so long (40 plus days) she pineconed, she started having her fry last night and thankfully her scales have gone down. Guppies are tropical fish and need to be kept at tropical fish temps, ideally 76-78 degrees. The confusion over temperature may be coming in due the circumstances of doing a water change with cooler water will encouraging a female to drop her fry if she is already ready.
It sounds like you have some young adults in your tank. You did not mention if you had any males? Are any of them gravid? Give it time, keep your water parameters in check and you should have more fry than you could ever want over time. You will need a male to fertilize the females if they were born in your tank with no male.
It sounds like you have some young adults in your tank. You did not mention if you had any males? Are any of them gravid? Give it time, keep your water parameters in check and you should have more fry than you could ever want over time. You will need a male to fertilize the females if they were born in your tank with no male.
Well I didm mention that this group has already spawned a few times. So yes I have males. When I add water to my aquarium I always warm it up so its not a shock to the fish when I put it in. These guppies arent too young to breed because like I said they have already done so. Granted I don't know which female was doing the birthing because I have one that has looked pregnant for a very long time. Also like I mentioned I lost 3 females a few weeks ago and I am kind of assuming they were the only ones giving birth in this group. Maybe there is something wrong with the remaining females? Maybe the males just arent giving them the lovins? lol I did lower my temp to 72 so maybe I will notice a difference. Would poor water quality, that isn't effecting the adults, kill off newly born fry? Ive read in many places that fry are actually hardier than adults some times.
UPDATE: Well once my frustration built up I decided to do a deep cleaning of the aquarium based of the theory that the water quality was either preventing the mothers from giving birth or killing the fresh fry. And wouldn't you know 5 minutes into the cleaning I spot a baby fry hiding in the back corner. So at least my question has been answered; yes my guppies were still breeding. However I had already kicked up enough gunk and clouded up the water I wasn't going to stop the cleaning. Pretty sure I killed the one little fry I saw because I haven't seen it since. Going to go purchase a bigger syphon so it does a better job of cleaning today.
